Anonymous Payments

[seedgeek]

I discovered the hard way today that pre paid visa gift cards in the US don't work for international purchases. Does anyone have any tips or tricks for making payments to a seedbox anonymously? Maybe I'm hyper paranoid but if the seedbox company I choose has to give up their records, I'd rather not have my real credit card information attached to it anyplace.

What do others do to pay anonymously?

[U2Fan]

I think the fine print of US only purchases is on the outside packaging of the prepaid card, albeit the print is about 4 point type and I couldn't read it either.

I can say for certain that Amazon Payments takes prepaid AmEx cards without running an AVS match. Paypal does not.
I don't know if prepaid MC/V cards will work without an AVS (address verification service) match at Amazon, so go try it and let us know.

If they do require an address to match: If you bought the prepaid MC or V card at a retail store, it probably came from GiftCard Mall and you can register the card there per the instructions with your card. Of course, if you accidentally misspell things like your name and address, be sure you make the same mistakes when you enter that information at Amazon. you could also try the same approach with paypal at this point and see how it hoes (let us know).

It goes without saying that you need to create a new amazon or paypal account with a fresh gmail address not tied to your phone or other email account. Also, you may want to log in from another IP address (e.g. public hotspot) and perhaps with a different Mac address (spoof it, or the easier way to do it is use a USB wifi adapter).


The only seedbox operator I know that takes Amazon Payments right now is DTSLeech.

I discovered the hard way today that pre paid visa gift cards in the US don't work for international purchases. Does anyone have any tips or tricks for making payments to a seedbox anonymously? Maybe I'm hyper paranoid but if the seedbox company I choose has to give up their records, I'd rather not have my real credit card information attached to it anyplace.

What do others do to pay anonymously?

[E5yx8kQH]

I had this same problem, without reading the fine print first I came to find out that those stupid cards are US only.

dediseedbox works with those cards, but that could mean down the line their records (ip logs, etc) may be easier to breach if it's a US company / payment processor.

Most seedboxes only take paypal, so I think your best bet (and mine when I'm up for renewal) is to get a Paypal Moneypak instead of any kind of visa/mc card. That way you can add the money directly to a paypal account and pay via account funds, rather than needing any kind of card.

As for still remaining anonymous, create a new paypal account while on a VPN or through a proxy. I'm not sure if using Tor will work to create the account, I did that the first time and had problems. A couple of free VPNs are hotspot sheild and vpn reactor (better than nothing but I'm sure it would be very easy for 'the man' to find you through them, if they wanted to).

[seedgeek]

I had this same problem, without reading the fine print first I came to find out that those stupid cards are US only.

dediseedbox works with those cards, but that could mean down the line their records (ip logs, etc) may be easier to breach if it's a US company / payment processor.

Most seedboxes only take paypal, so I think your best bet (and mine when I'm up for renewal) is to get a Paypal Moneypak instead of any kind of visa/mc card. That way you can add the money directly to a paypal account and pay via account funds, rather than needing any kind of card.

As for still remaining anonymous, create a new paypal account while on a VPN or through a proxy. I'm not sure if using Tor will work to create the account, I did that the first time and had problems. A couple of free VPNs are hotspot sheild and vpn reactor (better than nothing but I'm sure it would be very easy for 'the man' to find you through them, if they wanted to).

That's interesting, Dediseedbox was the one I was trying it on and it was refused, multiple times. I'm totally happy with them as a provider, I'm just hyper paranoid about linking my credit card to their service. Maybe I'm being overly cautious as it doesn't seem to be that big of a concern with others.

I looked at the PayPal with Moneypak route but stopped dead when I saw this little tidbit in the FAQ:

"How much money can I add to my PayPal account using the MoneyPak?You can add up to $4,000 a month by providing your name, address, date of birth, and Social Security number just before completing the online transfer. Green Dot will confirm and record this information on behalf of PayPal, but this information will not be used for a credit check or marketing purposes."

[bluboy]

I accept Amazon too as well as many others.

But as for the OP

You should try a prepaid american express card. Then use processors like paypal/amazon/alertpay to go through them. Then its not really international.

I accept moneypak as well. And that quote you pulled up is for $4,000. I highly doubt you'r going to need that much.
Without providing any info you can do $500/month with moneypak.

[U2Fan]

Sorry I missed you. What is your seedbox company?

Prepaid amex will not work with Paypal. I have not tried Alertpay or google checkout. There was something about moneypack that didn't excite me, either. I think the implication that you needed to register scared me away.

I accept Amazon too as well as many others.

But as for the OP

You should try a prepaid american express card. Then use processors like paypal/amazon/alertpay to go through them. Then its not really international.

I accept moneypak as well. And that quote you pulled up is for $4,000. I highly doubt you'r going to need that much.
Without providing any info you can do $500/month with moneypak.

[SeedStuff]

I discovered the hard way today that pre paid visa gift cards in the US don't work for international purchases. Does anyone have any tips or tricks for making payments to a seedbox anonymously? Maybe I'm hyper paranoid but if the seedbox company I choose has to give up their records, I'd rather not have my real credit card information attached to it anyplace.

What do others do to pay anonymously?

Most companies including ours offer this option:

Tick this box if you do NOT want us to store your credit card details for recurring billing"

You still have to enter it once, but we do not keep any records of transactions or credit card numbers on file unless they are stored for reoccuring billing. Also, we do not keep our payment / customer information on any servers tied with our seedboxes.

SeedStuff Hosting - Portal Home - Premium Seedbox Hosting Services

[Wonder56901]

I think that u2fan has a problem with the transaction being linked back to him. That purchase would be linked with the product, and that purchase would be linked (through the payment processor) to his credit card. He wants to be totally anonymous without having to rely upon providers to keep him anonymous. It's not that he doesn't trust you... It's just that he doesn't trust you, big brother, your hosting provider, his own isp, your security, your payment processor, the police, interpol, Obama, Bill Gates, Cisco, MPAA, Google and anyone else who may have an interest in suing him or attempting to place him in jail.......

He's after a method where he doesn't have to trust everyone above which anonymous payment doesn't really cover, but it reduces the payment paper trail...

Unfortunately, the IP Address trail is something I don't think is avoidable.... so it may make the effort to find an anonymous payment method a waste of time. Then again, an IP address is usually only linked to an address.... Where a payment is linked to a person... so it may help after all.

---------- Post added at 09:05 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:03 AM ----------

You know what I find is the best thing to use to keep yourself anonymous....

Cash.

See if they'd accept cash sent through the mail... or a money order.... or something like that.

Can you send a bank cheque without giving your details?

[oreja]

Aint there something like PaySafeCard or UKash in the United states?
Here in Europe you can use both to pay anonymously . ( of course you still have to make sure that you dont leave any traces to your real ip )

[U2Fan]

Wondering56901 summed it up nicely. I have no reason to mistrust any seedbox provider with the personal information. It's the paper trail kept by the banks that is available by subpoena or warrant. Even if the seedbox provider is conveniently disorganized and loses all their business records due to a terrible tragic unforeseeable unavoidable unfortunate event, the payment processors and financial institutions they work with all keep records of historic transactions.

I'm thinking about situations like UFC gaining access to billing information to pirate internet TV customers and suing them. A far less likely scenario would be the federal government stepping in and pursuing individuals just to make an example out of someone. Regardless, I don't need my name associated with any activity which may be construed as questionable.

Yes, this is paranoid, but just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

With respect to IP addresses, I am only concerned about the logging that is associated with the billing and administrative account access. I assume that the day to day logs of server access aren't retained for more than a couple weeks and would provide very little information of value, in my opinion. Am I being too cavalier about this?

[bluboy]

guys MoneyPak is 100% anonymous. nothing to register, you buy the card, and give me the code lol. That is just like cash except you have to pay like a $3.95 fee to use it lol

[Wonder56901]

With respect to IP addresses, I am only concerned about the logging that is associated with the billing and administrative account access. I assume that the day to day logs of server access aren't retained for more than a couple weeks and would provide very little information of value, in my opinion. Am I being too cavalier about this?

Yep, too cavalier.... If they keep the records for a few hours, and your server gets confiscated in a raid, then your finger print could be all over it. You want a seedbox company that logs to /dev/null. However, that would make it impossible to deal with anyone hacking into your server, but what would you prefer?

[E5yx8kQH]

guys MoneyPak is 100% anonymous. nothing to register, you buy the card, and give me the code lol. That is just like cash except you have to pay like a $3.95 fee to use it lol

Exactly. That's why it will be my next purchase.

You've got to pay 3.95 for those visa/mc cards also so there's no difference. Also another thing I had learned was that you can't actually link a prepaid gift card to paypal since it's not a real CC. That might be a problem I was experiencing too. Check PayPal's faq about it.

Ultimately I don't know if the payment would go through or not with a gift card but MoneyPak is the way to go for using paypal.

And again, proxies or vpns will help in reducing the IP trail while making payments. Won't so much help while you download from the ftp to your home pc on your own IP, though. ;)

[knn]

Ultimately I don't know if the payment would go through or not with a gift card but MoneyPak is the way to go for using paypal.

OK, but PayPal demands proofs, don't they? Water bills, passport scans etc. So as long as you need to pay via PayPal you are never anonymous, or not?

[Tori42]

Why not just use a provider that accepts Bitcoin as payment? It doesn't get more anonymous than that.